Enjoyed listening to it. Couple things: Jerusalem's close up camera probably should be set lower, cause by like 50 minutes into the episode she's only in the bottom half of the screen, whereas Matthew stays appropriately centered. Another thing is I really appreciated Jerusalem bringing in the results of actual studies early into the episode but it seemed like maybe Matthew hadn't actually read those same studies and so instead of having a meaningful discussion of what the results meant, their implications or not, etc, it kind of devolved into J - "studies say this" M - "well, my opinion is/I think..." which was kind of frustrating to see the lack of actual engagement and it sort of felt like there was just some talking past each other going on at that point. Perhaps if one or both of you intend to bring up specific research for a discussion (which I think is a good thing), you can give the other person your references so that the discussion can be more meaningful on those?
If your answer to the question posed for this debate is anything other than a resounding no, then you’re not allowed to refer to yourself as a liberal. Giving preference to people based on race, or other immutable characteristics is in fact highly illiberal. At the heart of liberalism is the importance of the individual — not the group. Identity-based politics is always illiberal, no matter how well-intentioned it may seem.
This is quite possibly my own fault (I was driving while listening!), but I had trouble following some of the arguments. I think the discussion could have been more organized. I look forward to listening to more. I would also say that it's hard to talk about affirmative action without opinion and vibes more than data.
A few points:
1. Jerusalem rocked my world when she said that people assume there is some sort of fair or ideal admissions process in the absence of affirmative action. I think I've always wanted the process to be closer to ideal and maybe ideal just isn't possible.
2. My daughter just went through the college admissions process. She is white and attended a private but not elite high school on the west coast. Excellent grades, high SAT score. She knows a lot of people who applied to competitive schools. Her dad and I have advanced degrees and attended an elite liberal arts college but didn't attend an Ivy.
My takeaways from the admissions process: The application process is out of hand! The admissions process is so opaque! Everything below 10% admission rate is a crapshoot! And she'll get a good education everywhere she got in. (Now I just need her to decide.)
Good argument! I enjoyed the podcast. It seems that evidence is somewhat mixed, but I thought Demsas used evidence better for her side. I think Matt should have used the most persuasive argument more, which is that this policy has just become too unpopular given its costs and benefits. The fact is it can’t even win in CALIFORNIA is because narrowly race-based policies appeal to a minority of whites and maybe half of blacks. Asians and Latinos haven’t embraced it, so it will just make a majority of people aggrieved. Better: find socio-economic criteria or something like that to achieve similar results.
This has been my argument - if the majority of voters in California aren't down with affirmative action, it needs to die and be replaced with something else, like socio-economic criteria.
The argument from some of my progressive friends of colleagues is that well ACTUALLy people like affirmative action and it was just that the ballot measure was worded weirdly, and/or right wing billioniares spent a lot of money on anti affirmative action ads, which I don't buy.
Digby Baltzell (who coined the term W.A.S.P.) stated that, for elites, the entire purpose of Ivy League education was networking. That's where society's future leaders went to meet. The academics were secondary. He has some quote, I don't exactly recall, about how getting drunk in the eating club was the "proper place" for these students, and how getting good grades was for the "middle class" students, only. I believe that this fact is one of the reasons that the Ivies felt they had to open up -- to minorities, women etc. in the 60s and 70s. Everyone knew this is what they were for.
It's hard to imagine things have changed _that much_. So Jerusalem is right on this point. It's just not ok for these schools to become just an extension of elite, expensive private high schools or (zoned to be private-like) public schools.
I'll give +1 to the "percentile of the class" proposal as done in Texas for all the reasons J and M said. I've thought this was the best fix since I first heard of this policy.
But I'll also say I agree with Matt's cynicism about Ivy+ admissions policies. They are responding to pressures by doing as little as they can get away with. Yes, as J said, that's pleasing donors. But it's also about pleasing faculty. But it's more than that.
An "advantage" for the old (status quo ante) racial preference policy is that it capitalizes on public vs. private information differences. The school can _*show*_ its racial diversity, both in reporting and with pictures on its website. In fact, to show a mostly Asian and partially white class would be a non-starter. But they don't have to disclose their economic non-diversity, it's not visible except in small ways (as noted by Anthony Jack in his book, or as revealed in the data Chetty made available via the NYT).
I can't help but think that explicit, non-merit based, government benefits are on a tier list of legitimacy in a free society:
1. Universal (Medicare, public school, fire departments etc.)
2. Safety nets, or benefits qualified by economic status (food stamps, WIC, section 8 vouchers etc.)
3. Inherited privileges subsidized by the government (subsidized property tax rates through inheritance (look up prop 13 in California, I'm not kidding), inherited water rights in the Western USA, legacy admissions, race-based preferences)
As a liberal, I think category 3 should be viewed with deep suspicion in a free society.
1) Matt keeping making logical leaps that are not grounded in actual facts. For example, why do which medical school graduates go on to specialities vs general practice? That matters quite a bit for his argument, but he handwaves a dynamic to support his argument rather than grounding it it either actual research of well-articulated reasoning.
This shit matters—which I think Jerusalem started the podcast with. That is, the facts matter. If you are instead distracted by motivated reasoning, you're just preaching to the converted and ignorant. Honestly, I've never hear Matt sound so sloppy in his arguments.
2) I have had the honor of transcribing the first episode in Overcast on my phone. I'm not sure whether the just-rolled-out implementation uploads my transcription or just fingerprinting. But if you use Overcast, I'd be curious to know whether your phone transcribed it or just mine's transcription.
I really didn’t enjoy this and it took me a while to figure out why but I think with this sort of debate it’s really important to bring facts to the table. Jerusalem tries to at the beginning but Matt didn’t really engage with them and he threw out a lot of opinions framed as facts to support his points. For instance, he says that the fact that Black doctors are more likely to be general practitioners because they have lower MCAT scores, with the implication being that if any students are admitted with similar scores we would achieve the same good outcome. But just a cursory Gemini search reveals that the MCAT isn’t correlated with choice of specialty or performance during medical residency. This was an important objection to Jerusalem’s defense of the good we achieve through seeking racial diversity but it wasn’t even true, and I doubt Matt or most of his listeners will ever seek to confirm whether it was or not. Things like this happened throughout the episode and it really left me disappointed.
When I search "is the mcat score correlated with speciality", this is what I get:
Yes, MCAT scores show a correlation with specialty selection, primarily because higher scores correlate with better performance on subsequent board exams (USMLE Step 1/2), which are major factors in matching into competitive specialties. While not a direct, insurmountable determinant, data indicates higher average MCAT scores for more competitive fields (e.g., Plastic Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery) compared to others.
That’s interesting! I asked Gemini again to see if it would give me a different answer and I’m still getting the result that MCAT scores don’t predict specialty. For reference my query was “Do MCAT scores align with specialty” followed by “could you find me some studies that specifically engage with the connection between mcat scores and specialty choice?”.
If it’s true that MCAT scores correlate with first step USMLE performance which in turn relate to specialty than that help Matt’s argument, but it’s also hard to determine what is the affect of the quality of the years of education between taking MCAT as an undergrad and taking the first step USMLE as a 2nd year med student. I guess this plays into Jerusalem and Matt’s disagreement about to what extent the quality of the school changes the applicant.
Jerusalem won this from minute one. Matt was refusing to allow himself to agree to points and you could see his bias shorting him out. It was concerning that he equates AA with lower standards. This is a wholistic solution so nuance matters.
As someone who has been missing The Weeds for years: (1) it's so great to see you both podcasting together and (2) I'm so glad you're incorporating papers into the show!
Matt's point about people not driving in silence was particularly interesting to me. I don't think the effect is explained by particularly active music-listening or by the nature of the content itself; I think people are switching from a listening routine with low interface burden (a radio station, an audiobook, a long-form podcast, a playlist) to a listening routine with high interface burden (assessing a new album, potentially skipping through it, finding what to listen to instead).
Most importantly though: if song-skipping is the mechanism of distraction-driven fatalities, then long-form podcasts are much safer for driving than music playlists that people skip through. So you're doing life-saving work here. Excited to hear more.
Enjoyed listening to it. Couple things: Jerusalem's close up camera probably should be set lower, cause by like 50 minutes into the episode she's only in the bottom half of the screen, whereas Matthew stays appropriately centered. Another thing is I really appreciated Jerusalem bringing in the results of actual studies early into the episode but it seemed like maybe Matthew hadn't actually read those same studies and so instead of having a meaningful discussion of what the results meant, their implications or not, etc, it kind of devolved into J - "studies say this" M - "well, my opinion is/I think..." which was kind of frustrating to see the lack of actual engagement and it sort of felt like there was just some talking past each other going on at that point. Perhaps if one or both of you intend to bring up specific research for a discussion (which I think is a good thing), you can give the other person your references so that the discussion can be more meaningful on those?
Yoooo we’re doing Weeds white papers again?? Hell yeah
Peer Review section is a good idea. Great pod!
If your answer to the question posed for this debate is anything other than a resounding no, then you’re not allowed to refer to yourself as a liberal. Giving preference to people based on race, or other immutable characteristics is in fact highly illiberal. At the heart of liberalism is the importance of the individual — not the group. Identity-based politics is always illiberal, no matter how well-intentioned it may seem.
This is quite possibly my own fault (I was driving while listening!), but I had trouble following some of the arguments. I think the discussion could have been more organized. I look forward to listening to more. I would also say that it's hard to talk about affirmative action without opinion and vibes more than data.
A few points:
1. Jerusalem rocked my world when she said that people assume there is some sort of fair or ideal admissions process in the absence of affirmative action. I think I've always wanted the process to be closer to ideal and maybe ideal just isn't possible.
2. My daughter just went through the college admissions process. She is white and attended a private but not elite high school on the west coast. Excellent grades, high SAT score. She knows a lot of people who applied to competitive schools. Her dad and I have advanced degrees and attended an elite liberal arts college but didn't attend an Ivy.
My takeaways from the admissions process: The application process is out of hand! The admissions process is so opaque! Everything below 10% admission rate is a crapshoot! And she'll get a good education everywhere she got in. (Now I just need her to decide.)
Good argument! I enjoyed the podcast. It seems that evidence is somewhat mixed, but I thought Demsas used evidence better for her side. I think Matt should have used the most persuasive argument more, which is that this policy has just become too unpopular given its costs and benefits. The fact is it can’t even win in CALIFORNIA is because narrowly race-based policies appeal to a minority of whites and maybe half of blacks. Asians and Latinos haven’t embraced it, so it will just make a majority of people aggrieved. Better: find socio-economic criteria or something like that to achieve similar results.
This has been my argument - if the majority of voters in California aren't down with affirmative action, it needs to die and be replaced with something else, like socio-economic criteria.
The argument from some of my progressive friends of colleagues is that well ACTUALLy people like affirmative action and it was just that the ballot measure was worded weirdly, and/or right wing billioniares spent a lot of money on anti affirmative action ads, which I don't buy.
I’ll listen to Demsas talk about anything and she has a good foil here in Yglesias
Great pod!
A couple of notes...
Digby Baltzell (who coined the term W.A.S.P.) stated that, for elites, the entire purpose of Ivy League education was networking. That's where society's future leaders went to meet. The academics were secondary. He has some quote, I don't exactly recall, about how getting drunk in the eating club was the "proper place" for these students, and how getting good grades was for the "middle class" students, only. I believe that this fact is one of the reasons that the Ivies felt they had to open up -- to minorities, women etc. in the 60s and 70s. Everyone knew this is what they were for.
It's hard to imagine things have changed _that much_. So Jerusalem is right on this point. It's just not ok for these schools to become just an extension of elite, expensive private high schools or (zoned to be private-like) public schools.
I'll give +1 to the "percentile of the class" proposal as done in Texas for all the reasons J and M said. I've thought this was the best fix since I first heard of this policy.
But I'll also say I agree with Matt's cynicism about Ivy+ admissions policies. They are responding to pressures by doing as little as they can get away with. Yes, as J said, that's pleasing donors. But it's also about pleasing faculty. But it's more than that.
An "advantage" for the old (status quo ante) racial preference policy is that it capitalizes on public vs. private information differences. The school can _*show*_ its racial diversity, both in reporting and with pictures on its website. In fact, to show a mostly Asian and partially white class would be a non-starter. But they don't have to disclose their economic non-diversity, it's not visible except in small ways (as noted by Anthony Jack in his book, or as revealed in the data Chetty made available via the NYT).
I can't help but think that explicit, non-merit based, government benefits are on a tier list of legitimacy in a free society:
1. Universal (Medicare, public school, fire departments etc.)
2. Safety nets, or benefits qualified by economic status (food stamps, WIC, section 8 vouchers etc.)
3. Inherited privileges subsidized by the government (subsidized property tax rates through inheritance (look up prop 13 in California, I'm not kidding), inherited water rights in the Western USA, legacy admissions, race-based preferences)
As a liberal, I think category 3 should be viewed with deep suspicion in a free society.
1) Matt keeping making logical leaps that are not grounded in actual facts. For example, why do which medical school graduates go on to specialities vs general practice? That matters quite a bit for his argument, but he handwaves a dynamic to support his argument rather than grounding it it either actual research of well-articulated reasoning.
This shit matters—which I think Jerusalem started the podcast with. That is, the facts matter. If you are instead distracted by motivated reasoning, you're just preaching to the converted and ignorant. Honestly, I've never hear Matt sound so sloppy in his arguments.
2) I have had the honor of transcribing the first episode in Overcast on my phone. I'm not sure whether the just-rolled-out implementation uploads my transcription or just fingerprinting. But if you use Overcast, I'd be curious to know whether your phone transcribed it or just mine's transcription.
I really didn’t enjoy this and it took me a while to figure out why but I think with this sort of debate it’s really important to bring facts to the table. Jerusalem tries to at the beginning but Matt didn’t really engage with them and he threw out a lot of opinions framed as facts to support his points. For instance, he says that the fact that Black doctors are more likely to be general practitioners because they have lower MCAT scores, with the implication being that if any students are admitted with similar scores we would achieve the same good outcome. But just a cursory Gemini search reveals that the MCAT isn’t correlated with choice of specialty or performance during medical residency. This was an important objection to Jerusalem’s defense of the good we achieve through seeking racial diversity but it wasn’t even true, and I doubt Matt or most of his listeners will ever seek to confirm whether it was or not. Things like this happened throughout the episode and it really left me disappointed.
When I search "is the mcat score correlated with speciality", this is what I get:
Yes, MCAT scores show a correlation with specialty selection, primarily because higher scores correlate with better performance on subsequent board exams (USMLE Step 1/2), which are major factors in matching into competitive specialties. While not a direct, insurmountable determinant, data indicates higher average MCAT scores for more competitive fields (e.g., Plastic Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery) compared to others.
That’s interesting! I asked Gemini again to see if it would give me a different answer and I’m still getting the result that MCAT scores don’t predict specialty. For reference my query was “Do MCAT scores align with specialty” followed by “could you find me some studies that specifically engage with the connection between mcat scores and specialty choice?”.
If it’s true that MCAT scores correlate with first step USMLE performance which in turn relate to specialty than that help Matt’s argument, but it’s also hard to determine what is the affect of the quality of the years of education between taking MCAT as an undergrad and taking the first step USMLE as a 2nd year med student. I guess this plays into Jerusalem and Matt’s disagreement about to what extent the quality of the school changes the applicant.
Striking that neither participant in this conversation acknowledged that discrimination against people on the basis of race is wrong on the merits
Jerusalem won this from minute one. Matt was refusing to allow himself to agree to points and you could see his bias shorting him out. It was concerning that he equates AA with lower standards. This is a wholistic solution so nuance matters.
Gotta use overcast playlists so that your next podcast auto plays. (I had to wait till I got to my destination to write this comment though)
As someone who has been missing The Weeds for years: (1) it's so great to see you both podcasting together and (2) I'm so glad you're incorporating papers into the show!
Matt's point about people not driving in silence was particularly interesting to me. I don't think the effect is explained by particularly active music-listening or by the nature of the content itself; I think people are switching from a listening routine with low interface burden (a radio station, an audiobook, a long-form podcast, a playlist) to a listening routine with high interface burden (assessing a new album, potentially skipping through it, finding what to listen to instead).
(I actually wrote a bit about this in my own paper-focused newsletter that focuses on media and wellbeing for what it's worth, but you guys beat me to it: https://substack.middlingcontent.net/p/those-deaths-werent-taylors-fault.)
Most importantly though: if song-skipping is the mechanism of distraction-driven fatalities, then long-form podcasts are much safer for driving than music playlists that people skip through. So you're doing life-saving work here. Excited to hear more.
I would love it if you could publish a transcript as well, or direct me to one if I have missed it.